Cloud radars at BCO
The first cloud radar measurements at the BCO started on the 10th of April 2010 with the KIT-WORA a cloud radar owned by the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology (KIT). It was operated until the 9th of January 2011. In December 2010 the scanning Ka-Band radar KATRIN was installed at the BCO. It was operated parallel to the KIT-WORA for a short time and replaced it in January 2011 as the BCO cloud radar.
(data of the KATRIN radar, stored in the common NetCDF-Format, can be found here:
/pool/OBS/BARBADOS_CLOUD_OBSERVATORY/Level_1/B_Reflectivity/Ka-Band/KATRIN/
In 2015 the more sensitive, but only profiling Ka-Band radar CORAL was installed at the BCO and after a time of parallel operation the KATRIN radar was decommissioned in 2018 and the CORAL radar remained the BCO cloud radar.
During December 2022 we installed a second Ka-Band-Radar (MBRS) inside the Coral-Lidar Container and until May 2024 we had both radars running in parallel. After that comparison time the old Ka-Band-Radar was sent back for repair. In January 2026 we moved the complete radar and antenna into a new container to split radar and lidar as the lidar needs to be exchanged in 2026.
